REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

China’s Sex-Worker Warrior Ye Haiyan Fights for Prostitutes’ Rights

PAUL MOONEY

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/31/china-s-sex-worker-warrior-ye-haiyan-fights-for-prostitutes-rights.html

Ye Haiyan campaigns to improve conditions and end discrimination for China’s sex workers and AIDS victims, who are scorned by society and abused by authorities. Her bid for empathy has even led her to work as a prostitute in a low-cost brothel. She explains her passion to Paul Mooney.

The brothel is so-called because poor migrant workers can obtain sex here for just 10, 20, or 30 yuan, with 10 yuan amounting to about $1.50. A sign on the wall of this barren room, however, says “Sexual Services Provided for Free.”

Ye Haiyan, the occupant of the small room, does not look like one of the regulars here, a group that is mostly made up of older prostitutes in their 40s and 50s. Actually, Ye, 37, is a well-known advocate for the rights of sex workers and AIDS victims, and she came here in January to get a first-hand feel for the lives of the young women she’s been defending for years, and to show her compassion for the many poor men who frequent such brothels. Her commitment is such that she actually has sex with customers the way the prostitutes would.

Sitting in a small Beijing hotel room earlier this month after returning from a sex workers conference in the United States, Ye says that when she was younger, she was never biased against sex workers—feeling they were “just trying to make a living”—but at the same time, never thought much about their plight or their low position in society.

When she ran a legitimate massage parlor next door to a beauty parlor that was a front for a brothel, the prostitutes would come over and sit and chat. After they left, her staff would run over and wipe off the chairs, afraid they would get AIDS if they sat on them.

She began to take more of an interest in sex workers when she was the manager of a karaoke, where she witnessed a sex worker being beaten by some men. “The police let the attackers go and did nothing for the victim,” she said.

The brothel is so-called because poor migrant workers can obtain sex here for just 10, 20, or 30 yuan, with 10 yuan amounting to about $1.50. A sign on the wall of this barren room, however, says “Sexual Services Provided for Free.”

Ye Haiyan, the occupant of the small room, does not look like one of the regulars here, a group that is mostly made up of older prostitutes in their 40s and 50s. Actually, Ye, 37, is a well-known advocate for the rights of sex workers and AIDS victims, and she came here in January to get a first-hand feel for the lives of the young women she’s been defending for years, and to show her compassion for the many poor men who frequent such brothels. Her commitment is such that she actually has sex with customers the way the prostitutes would.

Sitting in a small Beijing hotel room earlier this month after returning from a sex workers conference in the United States, Ye says that when she was younger, she was never biased against sex workers—feeling they were “just trying to make a living”—but at the same time, never thought much about their plight or their low position in society.

When she ran a legitimate massage parlor next door to a beauty parlor that was a front for a brothel, the prostitutes would come over and sit and chat. After they left, her staff would run over and wipe off the chairs, afraid they would get AIDS if they sat on them. 

She began to take more of an interest in sex workers when she was the manager of a karaoke, where she witnessed a sex worker being beaten by some men. “The police let the attackers go and did nothing for the victim,” she said.

Qiu Jin

A Chinese poet and a revolutionary, Qiu Jin was born in 1875 into a moderately wealthy family. While growing up she enjoyed riding horses and playing with swords. She also liked to read. Her family insisted that she receive good education and she was able to socialize with other well-educated people.

At the age of twenty-one Qiu Jin was married to an older man. He had a more conventional outlook on life than she did and she felt stifled in this relationship. She left her husband in 1903 and went to study in Japan where she was vocal in her support for women's rights and pressed for improved access to education for women. To provide female role models, she wrote articles about historical Chinese women.

In 1906 she returned to China and started publishing a women's magazine in which she encouraged women to gain financial independence through education and training in various prefessions. She encouraged women to resist oppression by their families and by the government. At the time it was still customary for women in China to have their feet bound at the age of five. The result of this practice was that the feet were small but crippled. Women's freedom of movement was severely restricted and left them dependent on other people. Such helpless women were, however, more desired as wives, so their families continued the practice to protect their daughters' future security.

Qiu Jin felt that a better future for women lay under a Western-type government instead of the corrupt Manchu government that was in power at the time. She joined forces with her male cousin Hsu Hsi-lin and together they worked to unite many secret revolutionary societies to work together for the overthrow of the Manchu government. On July 6, 1907 Hsu Hsi-lin was caught by the authorities before a scheduled uprising. He confessed his involvement under interrogation and was executed. Immediately after, on July 12, the government troops arrested Qiu Jin at the school for girls, where she was a principal. She refused to admit her involvement in the plot, but they found incriminating documents and she was beheaded. Qiu Jin was acknowleged immediately as a heroine and a martyr who died fighting enemies of the Chinese people and she became a symbol of women's independence.

Source: Distinguished Women of Past and Present, contributed by Danuta Bois, 1997; http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/qiujin.html

References:
Herstory. Women Who Changed the World, edited by Ruth Ashby and Deborah Gore Ohrn, Viking, 1995. Qiu Jin profile by Lynn Reese.

While Qiu Jin (秋瑾) is mainly remembered in the West as revolutionary and feminist, one aspect of her life that gets overlooked is her poetry and essays. Having received an exceptional education in classical literature, reflected in her writing of more traditional poetry (shi and ci) Qiu composed verse with a wide range of metaphors and allusions; mixing classical mythology along with revolutionary rhetoric.

 Read more at Voices

 

Women Of The Country

 

 

 

There have been radical changes for women in China in just a century. Here we profile some extraordinary women working to improve human rights, the environment and AIDS education. You may also nominate your own candidates to be added to our gallery.

  MORE AT PBS

The Camphor Suitcase

Xujun Eberlein

In the recent Year of the Snake — I remember because it’s my daughter’s sign — the image of a maroon suitcase made of camphor wood began to follow me like a phantom. It became most vivid in the dusk as I drove home from work, when my mind was free from corporate politics and daily domestic troubles. Along the road from Newton to Wayland, the famous New England autumn painted my windshield with shifting hues of golden red, dark red, light yellow, bright yellow, eclipsing shades of green and other unnamable colors. For me, born in southwest China, New England’s icy five-month winter imposes an unjust imprisonment; spring is practically non-existent; summer plays the double role of benefactor and spoiler; only the brilliant and solemn autumn calms my soul. But it failed me that year.

Many years ago, a pregnant foreign woman named X followed her new husband to his country…

I hadn’t set eyes on the camphor suitcase for 13 years. The last time I saw it was a day or two before I left Chongqing in summer 1988, in my girlhood bedroom. I secured the suitcase with a new thumb-size lock, and pocketed the pair of small aluminum keys that came with it. Bob, my American husband, lifted the heavy suitcase up above his head and gently placed it on top of the crammed, glass-fronted book cabinet that was, until then, my only property. A brief conversation went between my mother and me:

Me: “Could you please promise to keep it well?”

Mother: “Naturally.”

“Please do not try to open it.”

“You have the keys!”

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting — it seems in China everyone knew about The Unbearable Lightness of Being but none of Milan Kundera’s other works. I did not realize the dialogue with my mother was a replica of a phone conversation between Tamina and her father in a similar — yet not at all similar — situation. And I did not have Kundera’s insights into how irresistible some things — a car accident, someone else’s love letters — could be. Though all the love letters from Bob would go in my carry-on luggage to cross the ocean.

Why didn’t I bring the irreplaceable contents of the suitcase to America, and why did I take the keys, is a motivation that the brain did not preserve. I was a scientist, and it doesn’t take a scientific mind to know that keys are only useful if you also possess the matching lock. It frustrates me to no end trying to figure out my then-motive for separating them.

“Picked a sesame seed and dropped a watermelon,” an old adage admonishes against a foolish behavior as Chinese adages do. For whoever inspired those words though, I see two possible motivations: first that he might have viewed the sesame seed as larger than the watermelon; the second is obvious, he didn’t want the larger thing.

Read more at Literal Latte

 

Xujun Eberlein

Latté Contributor

Xujun Eberlein's fiction and literary nonfiction works have appeared in many magazines in the Unites States, Canada, England, Kenya, and Hong Kong. Her debut story collection, Apologies Forthcoming (Livingstone Press, June 2008), won the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award. For details about the book and the author, visit Xujun's website.

• Visit the personal website of Xujun Eberlein »

Big money offered for human eggs for surrogate parents in China

The ads in a local Englishlanguage newspaper and the Internet are aimed at young women, and say:

You could get Bt1 million as a reward - if you are Caucasian or Chinese, aged below 30, your height is above 160 centimetres, and you have a high IQ. The words are an invitation to females interested in being paid egg donors.

"Do you have an IQ of over 140?" a woman with a Chinese accent asked in her first question to a potential client before continuing to give details about the human egg donation in a phone interview.

Female donors were required to undergo health checks and send a report to the interviewer for consideration before getting an answer if they were qualified for consideration for the Bt1 million fee, she said.

" We will take care of and send your eggs to an in vitro fertilisation lab in China for a Chinese man who wants kids," the same woman said before finishing the conversation.

The advertisements for female egg donations for money are now being spread across the Internet. Most human eggs are wanted for in vitro fertilisation and surrogate parenthood.

According to the Medical Council of Thailand regulation, female donation for in vitro fertilisation and surrogate parenting is not allowed for commercial purposes.

Read more at THE NATION

Ancient Mongol Women

 

 

 

 

Ancient Mongol Women

 

The role of Ancient Mongol Women during Mongol Era

How did women play a role in early Mongolian culture?
In a nomadic society each member of the society was critical to the survival of the group. Women played a very important role in the economy and often took care of the animals. There was in effect, no civilian population. The Mongols had total male mobility for warfare. This made the Mongols a more daunting force than they might have been.

Women also played a role in the military. Many women who actually took part in battle were mentioned in Mongol, Chinese, and Persian chronicles. Accordingly Mongol women had rights and privileges that were not accorded to most East Asian women. Mongol women had the right to own property and to divorce. Although we don't know about ordinary Mongol women, we do know about prominent Mongol women among the elite. They were mentioned repeatedly in Mongol, Chinese, and European chronicles of the 13th century.

Ancient Mongol Women: SORGHAGHTANI BEKI

Probably the most famous of these women was Kublai Khan's mother, Chinggis Khan's daughter-in-law, Sorghaghtani Beki. She is mentioned in numerous sources as one of the great figures of the 13th century. European missionaries who visited the Mongols in the middle of the 13th century remarked that she was the most renowned of the Mongols. A Middle Eastern physician wrote that "if I were to see among the race of women another who is so remarkable a woman as this,

She set the stage for all four of her sons to become khans (kings). Although she herself was illiterate, she recognized that her sons had to be educated. Each one learned a different language that the Mongols needed in administering the vast domain that they had conquered.

Although she was a Nestorian Christian, she recognized that if the Mongols were to administer this vast empire one of the ways to do so was to ingratiate themselves to the clergy of these various religions. So she and her sons protected and provided support for each of the religions within the Mongol domains. She supported Muslims, Buddhists, and Confucianists. She introduced her son Kublai to the ideas of I would say that the race of women is superior to the race of men".

Confucian scholars to help him understand and be prepared to rule China. Another of her influences on Mongol rule was that she recognized that pure exploitation of subjected peoples would make no sense. Ravaging the economy of the conquered territories would ultimately be self defeating. Instead of turning China into one big pastureland, she advocated the support of the Chinese peasantry.

If the Mongols bolstered the local economy, eventually that would lead to increased production and increased tax collections. Each of her sons followed the same philosophy. Religious tolerance, support of indigenous economy, and literacy all proved crucial to her son Kublai, the man who really bridged the transition from nomadic steppe conquest to governance of the domains the Mongols had conquered.

Kublai identified with the Chinese. He realized he would have to make concessions to the Chinese in order to rule China. There was no way for the Mongols to succeed on their own. 100 million people couldn't be ruled with tens of thousands of Mongols. In addition the Mongols had no experience collecting taxes. In order to get that support from the Chinese, Khublai began to act like a typical Chinese emperor.

 

 

 

 

 

Read more at Ancient Mongol Women

Luo Meizhen, the longest living Chinese

 

Luo Meizhen, who was born in 1885 at Bama county of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, topped China''s latest list of the 10 longest-living people. Luo, of the Yao ethnic group, just celebrated her 125th birthday. [Photo/Xinhua]

View photo album at China assistor

China's future first lady already a big star

In this photo taken on April 10, 2007 and made available on Nov 2, 2010, Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping performs in Luoyang in central China's Henan province. Xi is in line to take the country's top post in two years, setting up an unusual scenario: In a system where leaders' families are kept almost invisible, how will the ruling Communist Party handle a first lady who's arguably more famous than her husband? So far, the answer appears to be by making her disappear too. (AP Photo) (AP)

BEIJING -- She's a glamorous singer with big hair, beloved by millions, and a major general in the People's Liberation Army to boot. He's a stiff policymaker, a suit with the bland public persona of most Chinese leaders.

Vice President Xi Jinping is in line to take the country's top post in two years, setting up an unusual scenario: In a system where leaders' families are kept almost invisible, how will the ruling Communist Party handle a first lady who's arguably more famous than her husband?

So far, the answer appears to be by making her disappear too. References to Xi's marriage to Peng Liyuan are being scrubbed from the Internet. She has been given a desk job at her military song-and-dance troupe, reducing her public appearances.

Interest in the couple was renewed last month after Xi was appointed to a committee overseeing the Chinese military, boosting the likelihood he will lead the Communist Party in 2012.

Political wives have long been viewed suspiciously in China - ever since Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, promoted his most radical policies, took part in purging opponents and ultimately made a grab for power. She was arrested and jailed after his death in 1976.

In a world where first ladies from France's Carla Bruni to America's Michelle Obama routinely grab media attention, Liu Yongqing, the wife of Chinese President Hu Jintao, is rarely seen except during state visits with the spouses of foreign leaders.

The almost absent Chinese first lady reflects in part the preference of the technocratic, authoritarian leadership for running the rising global power at an impersonal distance.

"On the one hand they have been talking about governance with a human touch and given that (Peng's) image is positive, what's the point of trying to eliminate it?" said Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago. "It's only making it more mysterious and provides room for speculation."

Read more at The Washington Post

Difficult to find a parking space in Beijing? Not for this lady.

China Pushes to End Public Shaming of Suspects

China Daily, via ReutersA “shame parade” of suspected prostitutes in the southern city of Shenzen in 2006.

 

BEIJING — The Chinese government has called for an end to the public shaming of criminal suspects, a time-honored cudgel of Chinese law enforcement but one that has increasingly rattled the public.

 

According to the state-run media, the Ministry of Public Security has ordered the police to stop parading suspects in public and has called on local departments to enforce laws in a “rational, calm and civilized manner.”

The new regulations are thought to be a response to the public outcry over a recent spate of “shame parades,” in which those suspected of being prostitutes are shackled and forced to walk in public.

Last October, the police in Henan Province took to the Internet, posting photographs of women suspected of being prostitutes. Other cities have taken to publishing the names and addresses of convicted sex workers and those of their clients. The most widely circulated images, taken earlier this month in the southern city of Dongguan, included young women roped together and paraded barefoot through crowded city streets.

The police later said they were not punishing the women, only seeking their help in the pursuit of an investigation.

The public response, at least on the Internet, has tended toward outrage. The anger, much of it directed at the police, comes at a time of growing mistrust of local law enforcement officials. Although corruption among the police is rife in China, public disdain has been further heightened by a series of widely publicized episodes involving suspects who mysteriously died while in custody.

Read more at The New York Times

China Pushes to End Public Shaming of Suspects

China Daily, via ReutersA “shame parade” of suspected prostitutes in the southern city of Shenzen in 2006.

 

BEIJING — The Chinese government has called for an end to the public shaming of criminal suspects, a time-honored cudgel of Chinese law enforcement but one that has increasingly rattled the public.

 

According to the state-run media, the Ministry of Public Security has ordered the police to stop parading suspects in public and has called on local departments to enforce laws in a “rational, calm and civilized manner.”

The new regulations are thought to be a response to the public outcry over a recent spate of “shame parades,” in which those suspected of being prostitutes are shackled and forced to walk in public.

Last October, the police in Henan Province took to the Internet, posting photographs of women suspected of being prostitutes. Other cities have taken to publishing the names and addresses of convicted sex workers and those of their clients. The most widely circulated images, taken earlier this month in the southern city of Dongguan, included young women roped together and paraded barefoot through crowded city streets.

The police later said they were not punishing the women, only seeking their help in the pursuit of an investigation.

The public response, at least on the Internet, has tended toward outrage. The anger, much of it directed at the police, comes at a time of growing mistrust of local law enforcement officials. Although corruption among the police is rife in China, public disdain has been further heightened by a series of widely publicized episodes involving suspects who mysteriously died while in custody.

Read more at The New York Times

China's pop queen Faye Wong plans comeback

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - The woman widely regarded as the "Queen of Mandopop" is making a long-waited comeback with a limited series of concerts in Beijing and Shanghai in October and November, six years after her last release.

The almost effortlessly cool Faye Wong has sold millions of albums and won fans across Asia, with songs ranging from the heart-rending early hit "Easily Hurt Woman" to the ersatz, Buddhist-inspired trip-hop of her 2000 album "Fable."

The entertainment pages of Chinese internet portals were dominated last week by pictures of Wong at a brief Beijing news conference to announce her return, many simply carrying the headline "The Diva Is Back."

Her popularity shows little sign of fading, with advanced sales for the just 10 concerts of her comeback tour -- five each in Beijing and Shanghai -- reaching 18.88 million yuan ($2.79 million) in only 10 days.

"Is this figure really that accurate?" the typically taciturn Wong asked, in one of her few utterances at the news conference in which she kept the press waiting for three hours and was then on stage for a mere three minutes.

Famous for her icy demeanor, Wong, 40, had more or less withdrawn from the limelight five years ago to concentrate on her charity, set up to help children born with cleft lips and palates, as her second daughter was.

Read more at the Washington Post

China's activist groups grow, even without official blessing

China's activist groups grow, even without official blessing

 

SHANGHAI -- Jin Ge used to be an idealist, unwilling to compromise and frustrated because of it. He felt as if he didn't belong in China. So 10 years ago he left for graduate school in the United States.

Then something happened in China that set the independent media producer on a course to become the kind of grassroots citizen advocate that's common in the West but rare in China's top-down system of Communist party and government control.

In 2006, a group of prostitutes had been paraded through the streets of the southern city of Shenzhen in a public shaming. Jin had seen some of his childhood friends enter the sex trade, and so the incident struck a nerve. He went online and started talking with others about the illegal sex trade in China, and soon he found himself flying to Wuhan, about 550 miles west of his native Shanghai.

Thus was born the Chinese Grassroots Women's Rights Workshop - to help sex workers in Wuhan, provide a forum for sex workers to communicate with each other and analyze the social conditions that have made the sex industry so huge in China.

In doing so, Jin joined the ranks of thousands of activists before him who've struggled to start independent grassroots groups in China. The government doesn't actively suppress such groups, whether they deal with the environment, poverty or sex workers, but it's hard to run them legally because most nongovernmental organizations are illegal and therefore can't raise funds without government approval.

"Basically, it's a paradox," Jin said. "So, most Chinese NGOs are not actually NGOs."

For example, Jin's organization collaborated with the Wuhan government's health department for the past two years, but is now registered as a private enterprise. He's hoping that the switch gives his group more independence.

Read more at the Miami Herald

Women Changing China

 

If you don't have time to watch the full version, go to FORA.tv and watch the chapters you aerested in.

 

 

Like a virgin

Let's start with the good stuff.

"Your virginity back in 20 minutes!"

"No surgery, no shots, no medicine, no side-effects. For a cool 100 yuan ($14.60) you can have your 'first time' back anytime!"

The ads for artificial hymens caught Ms Xie's attention outside a Chongqing sex store. She lowered her head, put on sun glasses, went inside and purchased a box of "Virtuous Girl Red" hymens for her big day: her first physical union with her husband-to-be.

The 100-yuan hymen kit contained a small dark-red semitransparent plastic insert. Xie tore off its cover, inserted it and waited 20 minutes until it "melted", and then carefully climbed into bed where her husband-to-be was waiting, with a voice running through her head saying, "remember to act like you are in pain."

After a few ups and downs, moans and groans, they relaxed, turned on the light and excitedly spotted a liquid that looks like blood on the bed sheet. He smiled and held her tightly in his arms. She felt like she was standing at the door of heaven until his question drew her quickly back to earth.

"Honey, what is that smell?"

It turned out that the "user friendly guidelines" written on the Virtuous Girl package neglected to mention a significant drawback: the "blood" smells.

They broke up eventually.

Too much pressure

Xie, 27, from Chongqing and who had had one previous partner prior to her "second virginity," told the Global Times that the reason she faked her virginity was because of pressure from her ex-boyfriend's family.

"I wanted to tell him the truth before our wedding because I thought he is open enough to accept me, " Xie said. "But one day

Read more at Global Times

Samantha Cameron

By Chelsea Girl in China

 

Samantha Cameron, the Chinese cover girl

Samantha Cameron appears on the front cover of this week’s Grazia magazine in China.

It appears a coalition with the Liberal Democrats was not the only surprising outcome of voting Tory at the General Election.  It has also made a pretty dowdy housewife a Chinese style icon.

Carla Bruni is a firm favourite in China. Her attendance at the otherwise drab concert for the opening of the Shanghai World Expo, with Nicolas Sarkozy, scored the French huge brownie points. The glamour of France’s ‘first lady’ is not wasted on modern Chinese women. But the latest edition of Chinese Grazia champions David Cameron’s wife as the new rival to Bruni or 布鲁尼. A two-page feature inside the magazine, which last year became the first glossy fortnightly to be launched in China, profiles the wife of the new British Prime Minister. In it she is judged to to be more supportive and ‘better’ for her husband’s career, than Carla Bruni. She is also lauded for her fashion sense said to be achieved without the help of a stylist. And the reporter remarks that she has a better figure than Michelle Obama.  

Samantha Cameron is said to be a more supportive wife than Carla with a better figure than Michelle

Readers get a run-down of where Mrs Cameron buys her clothes: Topshop, Russell & Bromley, Zara, Jaeger, Ted Baker and Vivienne Westwood. So will it spawn a craze for sensible Tory chic in China? Who knows. But Cameron would do well to capitalise on it by visiting China soon, and bringing the new Chinese fashion icon with him.

Sam Cam a cover girl in China

Iran's Ahmadinejad to visit China

TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is heading to China this week to discuss the threat of new UN sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said world powers have the necessary votes at the Security Council.

Ahmadinejad will be attending Expo Shanghai 2010, but will also meet top Chinese officials to discuss Iran's nuclear programme, the threat of sanctions and a fuel swap deal for a Tehran research reactor brokered by Brazil and Turkey last month, Iranian state television reported on Monday.

His visit to Security Council veto-wielding permanent member China takes on particular significance as a vote on a new sanctions package looms after the United States introduced a draft resolution last month.

China, which has emerged in recent years as Iran's main trading partner, continues to insist on diplomacy to resolve the standoff over Tehran's nuclear programme but US officials say they have Beijing's support for the sanctions resolution.

Before heading to China, Ahmadinejad was due to hold a round of meetings in Istanbul where he was attending a regional security and confidence building conference on Monday.

He was expected to meet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia, another Security Council permanent member, media reports said.

He was also due to meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the nuclear fuel swap deal.

On May 17, Turkey and Brazil brokered a deal with under which Iran agreed to ship 1,200 kilogrammes (2,640 pounds) of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey in return for high-enriched uranium fuel for the Tehran reactor which would be supplied later by Russia and France.

The deal was cold-shouldered immediately by Washington which has ratcheted up diplomatic pressure for a fourth set of UN sanctions against Iran for continuing to enrich uranium in defiance of repeated Security Council ultimatums.

The US secretary of state said on Monday that world powers have the required number of votes to pass the sanctions resolution.

Clinton said she expected Iran would "pull some stunt in the next couple of days" to try to head it off.

Read more at Google News

N.Korean women up for sale in China: activist

SEOUL — Young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner.

The human trafficking is far from new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside, said Reverend Chun Ki-Won, head of the Durihana Association, which offers aid to refugees.

Chun, who has helped more than 900 North Koreans escape from China, said women are forced to live "like animals" because of Beijing's policy of repatriating the refugees as economic migrants.

"China is now a responsible nation. It should care about national prestige through solving human rights issues," he told AFP.

If the women were not in danger of being sent back "they would not have to live such an inhumane life as this" in China, he said.

Men escaping the impoverished hardline North increasingly fall victim to tighter border controls or to bounties offered to Chinese for turning them in.

Women can find safer shelter across the border because of their economic value. Nowadays they make up around 80 percent of the tens of thousands of North Koreans hiding in China, Chun said.

Read more at Google News

The Marginalized Second Generation Peasants

Translation of a commentary in Southern Metropolis Daily titled “The Second-Generation Peasants Living an Ostracized Life”.

ALICE POON
Here is my translation of the commentary:- 

“Human beings are the subjects of a development process. Development policies should aim at transforming each individual into a major participant and beneficiary of the process and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups.

 

At the inauguration ceremony of the recent Shenzhen National People’s Congress meeting, government officials and enterprise management personnel had a chance to reflect on this issue. Xu Xiaowen, president of the Chang Yuan Group, said that it is necessary to change the present situation where factory workers are treated like ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’, and to increase after-work recreational activities for the workers.

 

In the author’s view, this is a depiction of the same old marginalized way of life for the second-generation peasant workers. Presently, the second-generation peasants are still ostracized from the urban social security system. They have long been in a precarious position in many aspects like living standards, job opportunities and medical benefits etc. Such precarious position is bound to force them to live spiritually isolated lives from society, and is the cause for their marginalized existence. The second-generation peasants live in isolation, far away from urban dwellers, from normal city life. They are unable to have normal family lives. They are like a bunch of ‘Robinson Crusoes and Fridays’ who have been stranded on a remote island and who live like castaways.

 

Hidden behind the saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ are two horrible revelations. One is that the second-generation peasants are doomed to the destiny of the first generation and from this phenomenon one can perceive the seriousness of social class stratification. The second-generation peasants are excluded from the city’s systems. Although they live within a city, their identities are not recognized by urban society, thus making them neither villagers nor city dwellers and landing them in an awkward position. This gives another marginalized quality to their existence.

 

The second revelation is that the hereditary gene rooted within the psyches of the marginalized group can lead to a strengthening and inflation of the feelings of deprivation. On the surface, the second-generation peasants have accepted the city way of life, but the city has not extended them an official reception, as the city does not count them in in its policy-making. It has thus caused antagonism in the marginalized group towards the city government. On this second-generation peasant issue, inequalities in the economic, cultural and social aspects are most prominent, as is the contradiction between the city’s acceptance of this group’s economic contribution and its non-acceptance of the group’s social status in the city.

 

The saying ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ fully reflects the fact that the second-generation peasants’ development right is being ignored. Human beings are the subjects of development process, and development policies should transform each individual into a participant and beneficiary of that process, and should not result in creating marginalized and victimized groups. Hence, ‘machines by day and wooden blocks by night’ is as well a matter of rights. It is only on this ground that one can see clearly the allegory of marginalization. Only from this standpoint can one contemplate the problem of how best to protect the young lives of the second-generation peasants.”

Asia Sentinel

Paying the Price of Missing Girls

LONDON, Jun 4, 2010 (IPS) - In a country like China, that regularly exorcises the ghosts of the past, few understand the importance of oral history better than Chinese writer Xinran.

A former journalist, who in the late 1980s worked for a secretive propaganda broadcasting station operated by the government to counter western media's infiltration into China, Xinran had access to stories that communist leaders prefer reading only in internally-circulated bulletins.

As a woman Xinran was also privy to personal narratives passed from mothers to daughters down generations in a male-dominated Confucian culture.

Now a firmly established overseas Chinese writer living in Britain, Xinran avoids descriptions of herself as a dissident intellectual. But her books cannot be published in China as they delve into accounts of personal pain that are routinely excised out of Chinese media and, defying political and social taboos, dare to thrust individuals against the powerful state machinery.

Antoaneta Becker caught up with Xinran during a promotion tour of her latest book, ‘Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother’, which compiles stories of women who lost daughters to infanticide or abandonment.

Q: In your new book you seem to blame traditional Confucian culture with its "son preference" for many Chinese families' decisions to kill or abandon their daughters. What about the ‘one-child’ policy that has been in place for 30 years? Doesn't this account for the deaths of many girls and for the fact that more than 120,000 Chinese orphans, almost all of them girls, have been adopted worldwide?

A: Many foreigners believe that the ‘one-child policy’ is to blame but this is only part of the problem. Chinese rural culture is a silent culture, a culture of little talk and a lot of action. It is very difficult to understand what is going on beyond the surface of movements. I once intervened on behalf of a peasant woman who had been kept almost as a sex slave by her husband and abused because she could not produce a son. That same night the girl's mother laced my food with rat poison. When questioned by the police she raged at me for being an ignorant "woman from the city" and for ruining her daughter's chances to produce an heir. There are ingrained beliefs among Chinese peasants that a "good" woman must give birth to a boy or she will have no future.

Q: When 21 baby bodies and foetuses were discovered dumped in a river on the outskirts of the city of Jining in east China recently the official media pointed a finger at "outdated practices" from the past when so many babies were dying at birth that no one would have thought of burying the dead bodies. Do you agree?

A: Absolutely not. I followed the story and did some investigation myself. All the dead babies had hospital tabs on their feet and came from the same Jining hospital. They were dumped either because they were born deformed or because they were born in violation of the ‘one-child policy’. In the cities of eastern China the enforcement of the policy is draconian.

Q: Has this family planning experiment worked nationwide?

A: The opposition to it has never died. Although the policy was adopted by the Communist Party in 1979, it was made into law only in 2001. You can see that for years the ‘one-child’ restrictions have been enforced without the backing of the parliament. Implementation has been uneven too. In recent years there has been a lot of corruption and those who have the means have managed to circumvent the rules.

Q: We all talk about China's gender imbalance and the thousands of "bare branches", or bachelors who are unable to find brides as an unwitting consequence of the ‘one-child policy’. But what about the national psyche? Has it suffered too?

A: The quality of family has deteriorated. Young people born as single children are too pampered and sheltered. They have no sense of responsibility or maturity and their lives are moulded from a very early age. As single children they must fulfill all family ambitions and they are made to excel at studies and learn to be very competitive. But they have no freedom to reflect on many things or disobey. They are also poor at making decisions and handling difficulties. I worry about the young people of China.

Q: Reading through all the stories of loss and death in your books one does wonder how you manage to cope with the burden of being the keeper of these oral accounts?

A: I was so depressed in China. I had to leave. I have my nightmares here too. But writing those stories has been the only way to share my feelings.

(END)

IPS

Australian female scientist shares life story with Chinese audience

CANBERRA, May 31 (Xinhua) -- Chosen to be one of the characters in the "Sisters", a mini-documentary being screened in the Australian Pavilion for 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Erika Cretney, an Australian female scientist has recently shared her life story with her Chinese audience.

"I was very excited and fortunate that they chose me, especially as a woman inside. I feel really honored. And now, we are chosen to fly to China for the Expo, it is going to be an amazing experience for us, something I will remember forever." Erika told Xinhua with excitement.

Being a successful women in science and a mother to two young boys, how to balance life and career? Erika told her Chinese audience, "I think a successful woman is a woman who is doing everything she wants to do, and achieves everything she wants to achieve, no matter she wants to stay at home raising children, or to have a career, they can both be successful."

"I think success depends on what you want to achieve by each individual woman. I think women live to make themselves happy is the most important thing. " she added.

Erika is a L'Oreal Women in Science Fellowship winner which is a special fellowship for women in science and encourage women to fight for leadership position in science.

"The movie was shot in November last year. At that moment, I was just thinking about to take a maternity leave, then I received the email from the producer, just three or four days before the baby came. I thought I didn't have time but the producer said they could wait for several months, so I agreed to do it because I was also very much to take part."

Read more at Xinuanet

The Freedom To Be A Mom: Laura Ling Speaks Out

Less than a year after her release from North Korea, journalist Laura Ling delivers a new book and a new baby.

Before Laura Ling left for her last Current TV assignment, she confided to her older sister, journalist Lisa Ling that she and her husband were trying to have a baby. Ling then left for China to report on the growing number of women who escaped from North Korea, hoping for better lives, only to be sold into marriage or forced into prostitution.

But near the end of Ling's trip, something went horribly wrong. Visiting the border between China and North Korea, Ling and her fellow journalist, Euna Lee, briefly set foot on a frozen North Korean river bank. They were chased down and captured by North Korean border guards.

Ling was imprisoned for five months in one of North Korea's most isolated prisons. She and Lee were eventually sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in the country's infamous gulags (work camps). Their families, which had worked tirelessly for their release, were devastated.

Lisa Ling had already begun a delicate diplomatic dance with the help of her contacts in the media, trying to put pressure on North Korea to release "the girls." Eventually North Korea asked for, and ultimately rejected, envoys led by former President : none" href="http://topics.forbes.com/Al%20Gore" rel=nofollow _old_href="http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.forbes.com%2FAl%2520Gore">Al Gore, the chairman of Current. Finally, in August 2009, former President Bill Clinton secured Ling's and Lee's release, and the two journalists came home.

Today Ling is back in California. She's also just delivered a baby--a girl named Li Jefferson Clayton, named after her sister and President William Jefferson Clinton. "Every day, my husband and I just ... smile, and we are so grateful," says Ling.

She has released a new book, co-authored withher sister, called Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and tOther's Fight to Bring Her Home.

Read more at Forbes

A Different Species: A Chinese American Writer in China

When I first moved to China to research and write my first novel, I never knew what to say when people asked how I was doing. The truth seemed weak and unwriterly: I was lonely and I wanted to go home.

Instead, I’d ramble about the strangeness of being Chinese American in China, the shocking intensity of Shanghai crowds even to a New Yorker, the absence of family, friends, schoolmates, colleagues. Once, I was rambling in this manner to a new acquaintance, a Shanghai native, when he shrugged and said, “You’re a linglei”—literally translated, a different species. It was a matter-of-fact statement, one that seemed, in two syllables, to sum up my existence.

Four years before, I’d moved to Beijing for a year of postgraduate study with some notions of mastering my mother tongue and reclaiming my heritage. I hadn’t expected to feel at home, but I hadn’t anticipated feeling quite so alien. Like most Asian Americans, I’d always been asked the question, “Where are you from?” with the expected answer being China, or someplace equally foreign. Now, this question was asked even more relentlessly of me by Chinese people in China, but the answer never satisfied them. But you don’t look American, they might say—or, You don’t sound Chinese. They’d assure me that I wasn’t really American, even as their suspicious expressions made clear that I certainly wasn’t really Chinese.

Read more at The Millions

China's 'most tragic figure': Wang Chongchong survives Sichuan, Yushu quakes

Of the many stories of personal stoicism and triumph to emerge from the Yushu earthquake, few have caught the attention of Chinese citizens and media like that of "Wang Chongchong" (王虫虫), who lost her livelihood in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, only to restart in Yushu and lose it again two years later.

China's most tragic figure Li Jing, a.k.a. Wang Chongchong

'The Most Tragic Figure' Becomes a 'Net Sensation
In the hours following the Yushu earthquake, as news trickled out across the country, the infamous human-powered Chinese netizenry got to work, frantically searching everything they could about the quake and the area in which it happened.

It didn't take long for somebody to procure a July 2009 post to Baidu question-and-answer platform Zhidao seeking financial advice. The post came up in initial searches probably because it contained keywords "earthquake" and "Yushu."

The question contained in the post read "I'm a victim of the Sichuan earthquake from the Anxian disaster area. Please advise whether or not with proof of this status, I am able to receive a tax break or exemption." The question had been posted under the online alias "Homeless Wang Chongchong" (王虫虫没家) and it went on to explain that after the poster's shop in Beichuan had been destroyed by the 2008 earthquake, the poster had subsequently set up a shop in Qinghai province's Yushu.

Read more at GoChendoo

Hip Hop Grannies

Beijing ladies with an attitude.